Lindsay Clancy jury says it cannot reach unanimous verdict as judge sends panel back to deliberate
BY SCN NEWS
PLYMOUTH, Massachusetts — Jurors deciding whether Lindsay Clancy should be held criminally responsible for killing her three young children told a Massachusetts judge Tuesday that they were unable to reach a unanimous verdict, the first public indication of a deadlock after nearly 18 hours of deliberations in one of the country's most closely watched criminal trials. Plymouth Superior Court Judge William Sullivan declined to end the proceedings and instead instructed the 12-member jury to return to the deliberation room and continue trying to reach a verdict.
The development came shortly after jurors began their fourth day of deliberations. In a note delivered to Sullivan Tuesday morning, the panel said that after many hours of discussion it remained unable to reach unanimity. Sullivan reminded jurors of the extraordinary volume of evidence presented during the nearly six-week trial — more than 80 witnesses and over 300 exhibits — and asked them to continue considering the case under the instructions they had already received.
The jury consists of nine women and three men and is confronting a question that has dominated the trial: not whether Clancy physically killed her children, which the defense does not dispute, but whether prosecutors have proved beyond a reasonable doubt that she was criminally responsible for her actions on January 24, 2023. Clancy, 36, has pleaded not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility in the deaths of her children — Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months — at the family's home in Duxbury.
Clancy's lawyers contend that the former labor-and-delivery nurse was experiencing postpartum psychosis and had lost her ability to understand reality when she strangled the children. The defense presented evidence of her deteriorating mental health, psychiatric treatment and hospitalization in the months before the deaths and argued that she experienced a command hallucination telling her to kill the children and herself. Prosecutors acknowledge that Clancy suffered from depression and suicidal thoughts but dispute that she was psychotic at the time of the killings.
Prosecutors instead argue that Clancy remained capable of understanding right from wrong and made deliberate decisions before and during the killings. The competing psychiatric assessments have made criminal responsibility — rather than identity or physical causation — the decisive issue confronting jurors. Under Massachusetts law, once lack of criminal responsibility is properly raised, prosecutors carry the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was criminally responsible.
The jury's deliberations had provided little indication of its thinking before Tuesday. On Friday, jurors asked to examine the knife Clancy used to injure herself and bags containing empty prescription medication bottles recovered from the home. They deliberated throughout Monday without reaching a verdict before returning Tuesday morning and informing Sullivan that they had reached an impasse.
A deadlock at this stage does not automatically mean a mistrial. Massachusetts judges can direct jurors to continue deliberating and, if the impasse persists, may eventually deliver a formal Tuey-Rodriguez instruction, sometimes called a “dynamite charge.” The instruction reminds jurors to reconsider their positions conscientiously and emphasizes that another jury would not necessarily receive better evidence or be better positioned to resolve the case. Sullivan had not given that heightened instruction when he initially returned the Clancy jury to deliberations Tuesday.
Only if the jury continues reporting that meaningful deliberation cannot produce unanimity could Sullivan ultimately declare a mistrial. That would end this trial without resolving Clancy's guilt or criminal responsibility, but it would not constitute an acquittal. Prosecutors could seek another trial. Massachusetts has recent experience with that process: the first Karen Read murder trial ended with a deadlocked jury in 2024 before prosecutors retried her, and a second jury later acquitted Read of the principal murder and manslaughter charges in 2025.
Jurors in Clancy's case have several possible verdicts available. They can convict her of first-degree murder or lesser offenses including second-degree murder or manslaughter, or find her not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility. Such an acquittal would not necessarily mean Clancy would immediately leave state custody: prosecutors can seek her commitment to a psychiatric facility if a court determines that she remains mentally ill and dangerous, with her status subject to subsequent judicial review.
Tuesday's note therefore changes the posture of the trial without determining its outcome. Until now, lengthy deliberations could simply have reflected the enormous evidentiary record. The jury itself has now confirmed that unanimity is the problem. What remains unknown — and jurors have not disclosed — is how they are divided, which charges are producing disagreement, or whether the dispute centers on Clancy's criminal responsibility.